


Soup

by hhike



Category: Star Wars, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Language, Romance, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26524543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhike/pseuds/hhike
Summary: Sometimes, the shared language isn't going to cut it. These times, a single word can mean an entire confession.Din finds a safe haven where he can recharge when he's not taking on the entire galaxy by himself.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Omera
Comments: 17
Kudos: 55





	Soup

“You sure you don’t want some soup?” Omera smiled at him and poured the diced vegetables into the perpetual stew behind the makeshift bar. “It’s on the house.”

“You know well what my answer is.” Din sighed, because his gut was trying to get out a very enthusiastic yes. The filters on his helmet kept the smells of the cantina at bay, but the sight was enough to get his mouth watering. He’s been hanging around the village all day, helping out and making sure the Kid only got into moderate amounts of trouble, so he hadn’t had a chance to eat since the morning.

“And you know well that I’m going to keep asking.”

Din had gotten used to people egging him on to take off his helmet, some more forcefully than others. Most mandos had to learn to deal with that from a young age, and by the time they grew up most had cultivated the skill of shrugging it off, around the same time they learned to shrug off blaster bolts with beskar.

Omera’s words felt much less teasing, though. They had become a part of the ritual the two of them went through every time Din came to visit, along with helping to repair some sheds, touring the perimeter and making sure the kids all did their homework - a big intimidating Mandalorian turned out to be pretty good motivation.

Din and the kid had arrived a few days before, their fourth visit this year. The plan was to maybe drop by for a week each year to check up on the town and its people, but somehow Din kept finding jobs to do a short hop away from Sorgan. And the little one liked it, so why would he not make this detour?

The first time they came back was after a long stint of terrible missions. Every job had ended up taking a wrong turn, resulting in injury, missing payment or embarrassment. It all came to a head when Din took a routine job of tracking down some rich aristocrat’s runaway boy. He had been tailing his target for a couple of blocks through a rundown market. There had been too much of a crowd there to do anything, but his mark had just decided to take a convenient shortcut through a dimly lit alley. Din’s patience had finally paid off.

He’d been adjusting his visor, trying to gauge his next move when he noticed a big, green blotch at the edge of his field of vision. Din startled and reflexively pulled back behind the corner. Somehow, the kid managed to follow him all this way from the _ Razor Crest _ and was now staring at him from an inch away, startled at Din’s sudden movements. 

He needed a fucking break.

The list of places he could go wasn’t exactly long. Nevarro was an option since it had been cleared out of imps after the incident, but landing on an inhospitable ball of dirt wasn’t going to do much in terms of rest and recreation, especially with Karga ready to pile more work on his favorite bounty hunter. He had sworn to himself that he would stay away from Sorgan to keep them safe, but ever since the bounty on his head was retracted, things had been quiet. Maybe if he took some precautions, laid some false tracks...

In the end, they had stayed for a month.. Din was welcomed back as a hero, and even though he wouldn’t admit it, he enjoyed not having to deal with constant peril. It took some getting used to the slower pace on the planet, and he still tensed up with every loud sound in the distance, but the people of Sorgan made sure most of his worries were quiet during his time there. Especially Omera.

It started with small things, a warm smile with his bowl of soup, helping him with the repairs around the village, and taking care of the Kid when Din was overwhelmed. He had been careful to keep his distance, glad that the helmet kept his face from betraying his emotions.

Yet patient as he was, Din found himself staying a minute longer each evening before heading back to the  _ Crest _ . He told himself he wanted to make sure that everyone made it back to the village before turning in for the day, but the truth was he enjoyed Omera’s stories, her voice, her presence. Every day she would sit closer to him, watching the last embers in the fireplace. It felt right in a way Din could put his finger on. So when she put her hand on his one evening, he didn’t pull away. He left the next morning, not knowing that he wouldn’t last two months before returning.

Now her fingers were absentmindedly caressing Din’s scalp as they gathered themselves.His hand was resting on the small of her back, he could feel her slow breaths on his chest. There was rarely a time when he felt more peaceful than this. One day, he was afraid he might not be able to leave again. 

“I wish you could stay longer”. It was as if she could read his mind.

“Me too. But I need to find someone to help train the kid. It’s.. This is --”

“I swear if you say this is the way I’m going to bite you”. She made sure Din understood the severity of the situation by placing her teeth around a nipple. 

Din sighed. Clearly, he had lost this battle.

“I just miss you a lot.” She curled tighter around him then. Din was getting used to feeling skin on his skin, it no longer felt like all his senses were being assaulted at once. Every time he visited, they had this conversation, and every time it took a little more for Din to stand his ground. He tried imagining himself as one of the men out in the field, tending to the crops, fixing machinery and having a place to call home. It was a decadent fantasy.

Yet whenever he did that, he didn’t find a place in it for the little womp rat. The kid needed someone to make sure he knew how to use the magic he was born with. The Way said he would have to find his species, but even without that, Din felt he owed that much to him. What came after, he wasn’t quite so sure.

It was Omera’s voice that broke him from his reverie. “So when are you coming back?”

“Huh? I don’t -- I’m not leaving yet.”

“No, not today, but tomorrow morning I’ll find you packing away your belongings and insisting you don’t have time for breakfast. Your face is an open book Din, you’ll have to work on that.” He couldn’t argue with that. The helmet was an easy way out of having to manage his facial expressions, so whenever it was off, it was always crystal clear what was on his mind.

“Are you coming back at all?”

Din was looking for the right thing to say. It felt like Omera had asked a question that was much bigger than the sum of her words. Just saying  _ yes _ felt like it wouldn’t be enough. 

_ “Ratiin” _

He felt her brows furrow against his shoulder. “Hm? Whuh?”

“Always. I said I’d always come back.”

“Oh. And here I thought you were cursing my mother. I was getting ready to kick you out of bed.”

Din wrapped an arm around her and turned onto his side to face her. In between the fits of laughter she tried to find purchase on the bed and shove him off but Din had to fight for his life on the ground often enough. By the end of it, he won about twenty percent more territory than before they started.

“Say it again!” Omera didn’t seem too bothered by the sudden loss of bed real estate. There was a childlike gleam in her eyes and anticipation in her voice.

“ _ Ratiin. _ ”

“Rateen?”

“No, no, no. It’s a different sound.  _ Ratiin _ .”

“Rah..teen? Tin--”

“That’s it!”

“Rahteen?”

Din sighed. “Almost. Let’s take it apart.  _ Ra-- _ ”

“Ra--”

“ _ tiin.” _

“tiin.”

“There you go! See? Nothing related to your mother in there.” Din pressed his forehead against hers and tried to contain his smile.

“ _ Ratiin. _ I’ll hold you to it, Mando.”

The intonation could still use some work, mando’a wasn’t kind to people who hadn't been raised in armor. Still, he enjoyed the sound of Omera’s voice trying to find its way around the word.

It took a few tries and some wordless negotiation to get the two of them into a position where nobody would lose limbs by the morning - the bed was made to fit one person, after all. Once every elbow was neutralized and both of them relaxed, Omera fell asleep in seconds while Din replayed the events of the day in his head. It was entirely different from his usual life, but becoming familiar at an alarming pace, was this something he would eventually tire of? He fell asleep before figuring out how he felt.

* * *

The first rays of sun had barely made it over the hills on the horizon when Din put on his helmet. Immediately he was assaulted by information: location of the  _ Crest _ , the Kid, weather forecast and good takeoff windows for a comfortable ride off planet. There was a massive storm brewing in the upper atmosphere, it was either leave in the next hour or not for another few days.

He sat down next to the bed with the intention of touching his forehead to Omera’s in goodbye, but he found himself lost for a moment, watching her chest rise and fall. This felt familiar in a way nothing had in a long time. There was a place again where he could - and had to - come back to. 

Every minute he sat there, Din felt the threats of the real world slip further away. Knowing that this moment right now existed, and that it would keep existing - he promised - helped him believe that his one mando crusade had a purpose. Every minute he spent taking in the sounds of Sorgan and Omera he felt as if he had yet another layer of armor to don when the inevitable came.

Din decided he could use all the protection he could get and the inevitable could wait a couple of days. He silenced the alarms on his HUD and watched as the storm slowly engulfed Sorgan.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed some respite for our favourite mando!
> 
> If you want to discuss mandalorian come join The Covert: https://discord.gg/eYBJx8q and read CoffeeQuill's fics!


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